Posted on 01/30/2016 5:19:52 AM PST by Kaslin
Conservatives have been hoping that "another Reagan" will come along for decades and we finally have one: Ted Cruz.
Like Reagan, Ted Cruz is not popular with the establishment wing of the Republican Party. In fact, you'll often hear it said that, "Some people don’t like Ted." There is truth to that and I would encourage you to judge Ted Cruz by his enemies.
Liberal Democrats fear Ted Cruz because they know he's a strong, principled conservative that can’t be browbeaten, pushed around or bought off. While many other Republicans insisted that we wave the white flag to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, again and again, it was Ted Cruz who called on conservatives to stand up for what they believe in instead of buckling at the knees.
Republicans who love open borders and amnesty don't like Ted Cruz much either because he's been one of their strongest foes in the Senate. Back in 2013, when Donald Trump was calling for amnesty and Marco Rubio was pushing a bill that would have altered the demographics of our country in a way that would have permanently marginalized conservatives going forward, Ted Cruz was on the right side of the fight.
Listen to what Jeff Sessions, the staunchest opponent of amnesty and open borders in the Senate, had to say about the battle over the Gang-of-8 amnesty bill.
"In 2013 they spent a billion and a half dollars to promote this legislation, the political consultants, they had pollsters hired to spin the numbers, they had special interest groups, they met for months, the gang of eight, they were determined, it was a near on thing, it was a worse bill than the 2007 bill. It gave amnesty first...It was that close to being passed... and I think I can say this with integrity. Without the vigorous opposition of Ted Cruz, this bill likely would have passed."
Additionally, establishment Republicans have never loved Ted Cruz. That's because Cruz's willingness to fight the Democrats puts a spotlight on their cowardice, the strength of his connection with conservatives reveals how out of touch they are and his insistence that Republicans keep their campaign promises highlights how seldom they actually keep their word. The fact that John Boehner has lost his job and that so many people are blaming the GOP leadership in Congress for the seething anger of Republican voters this year reveals the biggest reason the establishment Republicans hate Cruz: They were wrong and he was right.
It's these same establishment types who have used their favorite argument against a candidate who's obviously preferable to the ones they want, "He can't win the general election."
That is just what they said when Pat Toomey took on Arlen Specter, Marco Rubio took on Charlie Crist and Rand Paul took on Trey Grayson. In every one of those races, the establishment was wrong and it's wrong about Cruz as well.
Cruz is the best debater in the field, he's the ONLY candidate who could electrify the vast majority of conservatives in the race, he'd be the first Hispanic President in American history, he has a well-organized, data-driven campaign, he's one of the best fund raisers running and he's already beating the much better known Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polls.
That's important because it doesn't matter what you believe if you can't win a general election. However, as conservatives who have been burned by empty promises over and over again have also learned to their dismay, it doesn't matter if a candidate says all the right things if he's not willing to fight for them.
Ted Cruz ran on conservative issues like building a fence on our border when he was elected, he has lived up to his promises in the Senate and he has run a consistently conservative campaign. Cruz is also not temperamental and you don't ever have to wonder what he REALLY thinks about issues like abortion or health care. Perhaps even more importantly, Cruz has proven that he's a fighter who's not scared to go toe-to-toe with anybody from the Republican establishment to Obama, to the mainstream media.
Cruz's consistent conservatism mixed with his willingness to fight is why he's the ONLY CANDIDATE RUNNING who can absolutely be counted on to get rid of Obama's executive orders, kill Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood and build a fence on the border.
At the end of the day, none of us can control who gets elected. We can only do the best we can and let the chips fall where they may. So, I don't have any illusions about whether one more or less conservative columnist speaking out for Ted Cruz is going to make a big difference. However, what I will say is that Ted Cruz is the first grassroots-friendly conservative to be within striking distance of becoming the GOP nominee since Reagan. Opportunities like this don't come along very often and if conservatives let this one pass, we may never again have a chance to put a conservative champion like Cruz in the White House.
By the 1790 law, this would have been a real sticky wicket.
The mother was a citizen, but the father had not become a citizen, had lived here for a while, but then had moved to Canada and apparently immediately applied for Canadian citizenship, since he had it by 1973 and it takes a while to obtain it.
So, he would have been the child of a US citizen and a Canadian resident, even though that man had resided in the US prior to Cruz’s conception. I think George Washington would have considered Cruz Jr. not to be a US citizen by the 1790 law, but it’s got some odd details and I could be wrong.
At this point his natural born citizen status is irrelevant.
It’s going to be Trump. And Trump ain’t gonna pick Cruz as his running mate. Trump is going to go for an independent. Let us pray it isn’t Bloomberg.
Maybe Lieberman. He needs to shore up the middle. Whatever his pick for VP nobody on this forum is going to be happy.
I’m sure if you hired Cruz to argue that - no, a dual citizen of two countries and born in one can’t be a natural born citizen of the one he wasn’t born in.
And I’m sure he’d have an easier time with this argument than the one he is expecting us to believe...although he doeesn’t talk about it much.
After Obama I’ve had enough of this.
It’s just a curiosity for me at this point. I like early US history, and this is intriguing.
He won’t pick Bloomberg. I think he’ll go after Santorum, Rubio, Kasich, General Jack Keane, maybe Alan West....someone with some appeal to the base.
Who are today’s most accomplished American’s and conservative?
Don’t know why I put Kasich on that list. Picking Kasich would worry me. It could just be about the Ohio electors in the electoral college, but it also would say “moving to the middle”.
Santorum is more conservative than Kasich.
I don’t think he will pick a republican. I think he knows the path to victory is going to be getting independents to join in. Lieberman is a liberal, but he’s a patriot. My bet is he goes with a patriot who is not now not ever has been a Republican. Although Alan West might be a good alternative.
Then I’m going with a general: Jack Keane would be excellent.
Lieberman is 73 years old. That’s not ancient.
I just think it would signal exactly the wrong thing to people like me. I’d leave him over that. Lieberman is strong defense, but huge social programs and abortion support and climate change and on and on.
And that is the truth!
It certainly is. Can’t wrap my head around people on FR wanting to see Ted Cruz “going down on Monday night” as mkjessup put it above. It is totally mind boggling.
He has to win over the “ask not what I can do for my country, but ask what can my country do for me” independents. Those are the people who pushed Obama over the top.
Social and fiscal conservatives like us, unfortunately, make up a very small percentage of the electorate. Trump is running on that platform to get the nomination. In fact he is running hard right on that platform and he will, unfortunately, not be able to run that hard right in the general.
Trump is being “expedient”. Is he better than anything the democrats have to offer? Well, Satan would be better than Hillary or Sanders. But they are going to appeal to the “ask not what I can do for my country, but ask what can my country do for me” democrats and independents. Trump has to get some of them. Reagan had to take GHWB along for the ride.
Any “conservative” endorsement that doesn’t address the GOP’s “media handicap” is just another example of the GOPe feeding our people into the woodchipper, only to click their tongues in “told you so” disdain as he’s spewed out the other end.
It wasn’t added for no reason, they didn’t want immigrants to be able to become President. They only required 14 years of residency in the U.S. to become President, so obviously they weren’t paranoid that someone who lived outside the U.S. for even most of their life would be some sort of evil foreign agent. It’s up to other countries to decide who becomes a citizen or not. Canada could make everyone in the U.S. a citizen now if they wanted. It’s irrelevant to someone’s qualifications. Did they leave out a part of the Constitution that might have said you can’t be a dual citizen for a reason?
I can’t argue with you, but Trump abandons me when he abandons “close the border”. That is his primary credential, and I’m okay with getting that one thing.
However, in reading his history, it appears he really was a Reagan republican when he was young. He backslid. He’s not so much a convert as a reclaimed sinner. Let’s see what happens is the gamble I’m taking.
But I get open borders with anyone else who is likely to win, and Cruz is closed border but keeps shooting himself in the foot.
Both of them support ‘legal immigration’, and I’d like a total moratorium on that, but not one politician is asking for that.
If like our Constitution, Canada’s says you have to reside there for 14 years to be President, then, no, he was never qualified to be President of Canada.
Cruz is a natural-born U.S. citizen. Did he have to immigrate here? No, he was a citizen at birth. Our Constitution wasn’t so stupidly written that it didn’t make children of U.S. citizens natural-born citizens themselves. It would be hard to raise your child if you couldn’t bring it back into the U.S. if it was born while you were traveling abroad.
Try to legally immigrate to Switzerland some time.
Or for that matter, try to illegally immigrate to Mexico.
They didn’t say anything about it because the concept of being a natural-born citizen of two countries would never occur to a reasonable person. It only occurs to people who want something so badly that they are willing to cut corners around the law to get what they want. I, for one, have had enough of that with the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, and I don’t want to do it again.
He is a natural born Canadian citizen. Somebody posted the part of the Canadian states that says so on another thread. He is not an American NBC. There is no way In the world to convince me that somebody born in a foreign country, with a non citizen parent and who held dual citizenship for 43 years is what the founders had in mind when they wrote that requirement. Cruz is qualified to be my Senator and I voted for him for that office. He may even be qualified to be president of Canada, that I do not know. I do know that he is not qualified to be POTUS and Cruz knows it also.
Neither Mexico nor Switzerland want me for anything other than tourist dollars. Switzerland I’d consider, but an Anglo in Mexico has a death wish.
Do you consider Ted Cruz to be an alien or foreigner?
Neither. I consider him a US citizen, just not NBC.
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